Education:
The LifeLong Universe, a free site devoted to educational resources, provides two web based "talking" courses for young children. The speech is particularly useful because young children's reading skills may not be so good. One course, Monster Math, also speaks in Spanish for those children who's mother tongue is Spanish and are still learning English. Anyone with Netscape 2.0 and the Talker plug-in can use the courses.
Monster Math Talking Stories (ages 5 to 7) It is time for the Monster Math!! A fun way to learn math facts. In
Spanish and English. Curriculum by Tracy Lieberman of the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory
School in Manhattan.
Stubby Cottontail Talking Adventures (ages 9 to 12) Follow Stubby Cottontail and the gang in this continuing HyperComic. Make decisions (practical and ethical) for Stubby in this simulation of life comic. Soon in Spanish too. By: David Isaacs
Entertainment:
Hearts Deluxe, the award-winning card game from FreeVerse Software, has gotten
even better. Using the latest speech recognition technologies from Apple Computer, you can now play hearts against
Bill Clinton, Winston Churchill, Alice in Wonderland, or any of the many other characters available for Hearts
Deluxe, using only your voice.Just say, "Two of Clubs" or "Jack of Diamonds" and Hearts Deluxe will play that card
for you. You can play a complete game without touching your keyboard or mouse.
Hearts Deluxe offers 3-D colorful charaters who joke and react
to the fall of the cards. It offers an online tutor to teach you how to play hearts, three skill levels of play, and
now, voice recognition. Hearts Deluxe has received the highest rating from MacUser Magazine and Time Out. New York
Magazine said Hearts Deluxe "breaks the mold with a touch of class." Shareware: $20.00.
Productivity:
Articulate Sytems provides the PowerSecretary speech dictation system. With advanced speech recognition technology, it enables you to enter text into a custom word processor or your favourite Mac application simply by speaking. At the Macworld software library you can read the four-star review by David Pogue and also dowload a demo movie of Power Secretary in action. PowerSecretary will run on a wide range of Macintosh models with a 12MB of free RAM. List Price is $2495.00.
MacYack Pro is a commercial package of speech software available from Scantron Quality
Computers. It includes 8 programs and 21 voices. MacYack Pro allows you to take full
advantage of Apple's PlainTalk Text-to-Speech synthesis software.
With MacYack Pro, you'll be able to:
- Add speech to any word processor.
- Hear notification dialogs and other dialog boxes.
- See and hear a customized message at startup or shutdown.
- Hear calculations instantly.
- Correct pronounciation errors.
- Create custom double-clickable "speech files."
- Have speaking alert sounds.
- Add speech to HyperCard stacks.
- Use AppleScript to add speech to other programs.
Utility:
Eastgate's Web Squirrel is a program that can help gather, preserve, and organize hundreds of internet resources. You can add things by dragging, pasting, or
importing. Just double-click to follow a link, send a message, or fetch a file. *Agents* automatically track items you add, and scan your information farm for items of special interest. Using PlainTalk speech, it reads a comment or
description to you while the item is being loaded. This can be very
powerful (and subversive!), encouraging people to build meta-texts that
describe regions of the web for their colleagues, students, or friends
while providing an individual introduction to each place.
The Eastgate Web Squirrel runs on Macintosh computers and sells for $49.95. (A version for Windows is expected in 1996.)
A FREE test edition, including a variety of sample farms, is available from Eastgate.
[Speech News] [PlainTalk] [Product Lists] [Archive]
Questions or comments about this site? Mail to:
plaintalk@psu.edu
Images and Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Copyright © 1996